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This study aims to examine the impact of carbon performance on firm financial performance by using Republic of South Africa CDP company data from 2014 to 2015.

The study considered 63 companies on the Republic of South Africa CDP database. Content analysis was used to extract both carbon performance data and firm financial data. The data were analysed using panel data analysis and partial derivative approaches.

The findings indicate that carbon performance produces a positive relationship with return on equity (ROE) and return on sales (ROS). Conversely, it generates a negative relationship with return on investment (ROI) and market value added (MVA). Furthermore, the study highlights that carbon performance pays and that the relationship with financial performance (ROE, ROS, ROI and MVA) deepens as the corporate growth rate increases.

Companies that integrate carbon performance initiatives reap substantial financial gains, and this relationship is strengthened as the company’s growth rate increases.

The research questions and data collected from Republic of South African CDP firms are original and provide important evidence on the impact of carbon performance on firm financial indicators. Furthermore, many empirical studies focus on highly industrialised countries; this study examines this issue in the emerging South African economy which has experienced rapid growth of emissions in recent years. While most previous studies on the relationship between carbon performance and firm financial performance used a single class of corporate financial measures, this study used both accounting- and market-based indicators. It also investigated how firm growth moderates the association between carbon performance and diverse financial performance measures. Finally, pressure exerted by green stakeholders since the introduction of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s sustainability criteria in 2004, as well as government policies, has a profound impact on the South African business context; it is hence important to examine corporate environmental management activities in the context of the association between carbon performance and firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to seek to shed light on the influence of stakeholder pressure on carbon disclosure in an emerging economy.

The present study is based on Bombay Stock Exchange 100 Indian firms for the period of 5 years from 2016–17 to 2020–21. The association between stakeholder pressure and carbon disclosure, along with certain control variables, has been explored through a regression model.

The results of the study suggest that stakeholders exert a significant influence on corporate carbon disclosure. Further results confirm that regulatory and customer pressure have the most significant and positive influence, while shareholders and creditors exert a significant and negative influence on carbon disclosure. The study also finds that employee pressure does not have any association with carbon disclosure.

This study adds to the existing literature on climate change, carbon disclosure and stakeholder pressure.

The present study provides useful insights to corporate managers and policymakers as the study concludes that stakeholders exert a significant influence on carbon disclosure.

Previous studies examining the stakeholder pressure on carbon disclosure ignored emerging economies, while the present study has considered India, which is a developing as well as an emerging economy. Further, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first of its kind to investigate the stakeholder pressure on carbon disclosure in the Indian context. The present study develops a comprehensive index to measure corporate carbon disclosure.

The current study examined the impact of population ageing on environmental quality in 17 late-demographic dividend (LDD) countries.

The panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model using pooled mean group (PMG) estimator based on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis was used to analyse data for the period 1990–2018.

The empirical results demonstrated that in the long run, carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions decrease with population ageing. The prevailing findings also indicated no sufficient evidence of EKC hypothesis validity and electricity consumption, which is the primary driving force of CO₂ emissions in LDD countries.

Unlike prior works, this paper is among the first to discuss environmental quality due to the current demographic transition towards ageing among LDD countries. Based on the results, population ageing reduces the environmental deterioration. The identification of possible ageing impact is vital to combat the climate change in order for countries to achieve sustainability, better economy and quality environment.

This paper aims to investigate whether the sustainability disclosure with the environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects has an impact on the financial performance represented by Tobin’s Q, return on assets (ROA) and return on equity indices in the Levant countries for the period 2012–2019, which was a period of turmoil and political repercussions that affected the countries of the region.

Using the content analysis technique, the data was collected from 124 nonfinancial companies from Levant countries (Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon), and 883 observations were collected as panel data for the research analysis.

The findings indicate that the environmental, social and ESG collective performance maximizes financial performance, while the governance performance influences ROA only. This suggests that companies pay great attention to various stakeholders, mainly external. Maximizing stakeholder value remains an optimal strategy to achieve the company’s financial goals. Thus, improving the disclosure levels of nonfinancial performance in the capital markets will improve the chances of growth of the financial performance indicators of companies.

The study provided insights about the ESG role and its impact on the financial performance of companies in a less explored context by previous literature, namely, the Levant.

This paper aims to explore the driving forces for having carbon reporting and carbon reduction management strategies in emerging and developing countries.

The methodology employed uses logit and linear panel data models and generalized moments method, to avoid endogeneity problems.

The results show that the carbon reporting decision is positively related to being located in Africa or America (as opposed to Asia), publishing a sustainability report and having certain corporate governance (CG) attributes such as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee, larger board size and an executive compensation policy based on environmental and social performance. Regarding the driving forces leading to a reduction of carbon emissions, no evidence is obtained on the effect of the variables considered.

The evidence obtained is valuable, as it can help standard-setters in these geographical areas to promote actions in the field of CG to increase transparency. Nonetheless, additional measures to disclosure should be needed in the future to help decrease carbon emissions more effectively.

Raising awareness amongst companies helps mimetic isomorphism take place so that efforts can be made to report levels of pollution in an initial phase, which hopefully in the future may be managed to try to keep a decreasing path. Therefore, implications of this research are crucial for emerging and developing countries, as they are especially vulnerable to climate change.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to look into this phenomenon in emerging and developing countries from Asia, Africa and America. This contribution is unique as this research shows that location, publication of a sustainability report together with some CG attributes are drivers for carbon transparency.

Since the end of the war, most countries — if not all — have realised the importance of the powerful stimulus created by tourist spending. The high rate of tourist spending and turnover of expenditure in tourist trades introduce large sums of extra money into the local community. It is, therefore, quite obvious that the tourist industry can bring prosperity to areas lacking in natural resources and can sustain a range of public utility services far above that which the local region can afford without this help. These utility services can become the foundation on which secondary industries may be based. They can help to bring life to less frequented areas and to check the drift towards cosmopolitan cities which has affected these areas so seriously.

IT has now been definitely arranged that the Conference of the Library Association will take place in the week beginning September 6th. Leeds has an old‐time reputation for hospitality and civic pride, and there is every reason to believe that from the library point of view also the Conference will be one of the most interesting and productive of recent years. It will appeal strongly to the whole of this generation of librarians from the fact that the President‐elect is Dr. Henry Guppy, the veteran Librarian of the John Rylands Library, who in the old days, when he was editor of The Library Association Record, gave perhaps greater stimulus than any man of his day to the young library worker to educate and equip himself for finer library service. It may be that under its present able editor the Library Association Record is approaching the quality which it possessed under Dr. Guppy. We doubt whether it has surpassed or can surpass that quality. It is hoped, we understand, that the main subjects for discussion will be those which arose out of Principal Grant Robertson's Inaugural Address at Birmingham last year. Libraries and citizenship is a subject with many phases and possibilities. We hope that the Council will give us the opportunity to explore many of its avenues.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

So far as municipal libraries are concerned, by the time these lines appear librarians will mostly have faced the annual ordeal of the Estimates. It will not have been an easy time for them; for 1921–22 will be the first year in which the high post‐war charges of all kinds have to be encountered as a whole; and the forecast, at a time when the public generally is crying for economy—by which it means retrenchment—has in many cases seemed a gloomy one. The times are serious, and unemployment and slack industries do not make for enthusiasm for library or other constructive expenditure. The phase is, we hope, a transient, transitional one, and while we may deplore retrenchment in any phase of our work, it may be better to face the facts squarely, and to acquiesce in a certain amount of restraint than to resist it, in the hope that our moderation may lead to a larger measure of money and moral support later. It is only a hope, but it is worth cherishing.

THIS month the Editor finds himself in rather a quandary. Since the number of staff that may justifiably be employed on a specialized journal of relatively limited circulation is not large, there must inevitably be some overlapping of the various functions involved in its publication, and we therefore have occasion to concern ourselves to some extent with the subscription side of The Library World, as well as with its production. We have been glancing through some of the 1957 issues of the journal, which at that time were appearing some three months later than their publication dates, and noting also the circulation figures of those issues. We then turned to the issues for the first six months of 1959, the second half of Volume 60, and their circulation, which showed an increase of roughly 20% on the earlier figures.